


Remants of an Unlife (The Magellan & Creek (Deceased) Remix)

by thisbluespirit



Category: Jonathan Creek (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Ghosts, Remix, but not strictly, otherwise jonathan would have to wear a white duffel coat, practically a randall & hopkirk au
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26612623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thisbluespirit/pseuds/thisbluespirit
Summary: When you spend your life going round disproving the paranormal, the last thing you want to do is end up as a ghost.  Jonathan isn't exactly sure his friends are helping, either.
Relationships: Jonathan Creek/Maddy Magellan
Comments: 11
Kudos: 17
Collections: Remix Revival 2020





	Remants of an Unlife (The Magellan & Creek (Deceased) Remix)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [still_lycoris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Fragments of Life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/25353901) by [still_lycoris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/still_lycoris/pseuds/still_lycoris). 



> With many thanks to Persiflage for the beta!

It wasn’t all that bad, being dead. Admittedly, it wasn’t that great, either and the actual dying part had been weird, all whirly, like the way Jonathan imagined jumping off the top diving board would feel. The thing with the mad inventor’s machine that had landed him as a ghost had been the most irritating aspect, because it was impossible. No way should that have worked. So, if he was a ghost, it must just be a thing that happened to some people. If there were rules about it, which apparently there were, he could hardly be the only person who’d ever haunted anyone. That didn’t really make the whole thing any less embarrassing. He’d never believed in ghosts or the afterlife and had spent a lot of his time alive explaining to people who did that they were wrong. Now it seemed he was going to spend the entirety of his afterlife proving himself wrong. 

Overall, being dead, or undead, was mainly sort of vague and floaty and detached and he got to worry a lot less about everything. He never had to arrange any stunts for Adam Klaus to mangle in the most offensive way known to humankind. In fact, when he thought about his former life with Adam Klaus, he felt he was better off like this.

“You were late?” Maddy said when he tried to explain why he hadn’t faded mercifully away after the mystery was solved, the way they’d expected. “You, Jonathan Creek, were barred from the afterlife because you were late?”

“And who made me late? Who had to take far too long to cross an ocean and solve my murder?”

“I nearly got killed in the attempt! Is this all the thanks I get?”

Jonathan stuck his ghostly hands in his equally ghostly duffel coat. “Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Just, you could have been quicker. As usual. Turns out they have rules, and if you don’t get back to your grave quick enough you’re cursed to wander the earth for a hundred years, haunting the one person –” He stopped. The one person who means the most to you. And of course it’s her, isn’t it? It always has been her. 

“So, this is my life now? And your unlife. Stuck together. What are we now, soulmates?”

“A horror story, as usual.”

Maddy thought about it for a long moment and then looked unusually serious. “Yeah. Yeah, it is. But you know what? Might be better than the other horror story. The one where you’re dead _and_ I never get to see you again.”

He couldn’t disagree with her on that. He never had been able to. That was where the trouble had begun, when you came down to it.

* * *

“It must be annoying,” said Carla, glancing up from her book. He was sure she wasn’t actually reading it. She’d turned over two pages at once five minutes ago. “I mean, all those years of scepticism and proving people wrong about haunted houses and impossible murders and then you get murdered and wind up as a ghost. I can’t imagine anything more humiliating.”

Jonathan sighed. “How did I get stuck with you on ghost-sitting duties tonight?”

He couldn’t go anywhere or be anywhere without Maddy, but it had turned out that he could temporarily attach himself to his other former investigating partners. Which was obviously a good thing; nobody wanted to be haunted 24/7 for the rest of their lives, but he resented being passed around his former partners like a problematic see-through shaggy dog who needed a walker while his owner was away for the weekend.

“I wish I could hear you,” said Carla. “I bet you’re saying something really scathing right now and I’m sitting here, oblivious. Although I am getting some seriously negative vibes. I’m guessing that’s you. Must be torment. Perhaps that’s what hell really is.”

Jonathan was pretty sure he was not sending anyone negative vibes. At least, not intentionally. Not any more than he had when he was alive. People always had complained that he could dampen any occasion. Maybe now he was a ghost, that was his special supernatural ability. It was a depressing thought. He tried not to send it in her direction.

“I can almost see you sometimes,” she went on. “Out of the corner of my eye, but not really. Are you sure you couldn’t appear properly if you put more effort into it? That mad scientist gave Brendon the idea of doing a paranormal show and we _were_ the ones who solved your murder, so you do owe us –”

Jonathan spent five minutes venting his feelings about that suggestion until he finally spotted the smug look on her face as she stretched her legs and cast a pointed glance over in his general sort of direction.

“Can’t have you getting bored, can we?”

He glowered, and whether or not she really could sense any vibes from his direction, her mood shifted.

“I _am_ sorry, Jonathan. I mean it.”

Sympathy was even worse. He wasn’t going to suddenly get alive again, so there was no point in it. God, he was going to have to develop some kind of poltergeist activity to distract her at moments like this. Hovering around vaguely and hoping that Maddy would come back soon was a pathetic attitude for a spirit. 

“Hey, remember that time you proved that ghosthunter wasn’t coming back to haunt anyone? What if he _was_ and some scruffy TV detective turned up, going on about how credulous people were to believe in ghosts? Talk about ironic!”

All right, she could go back to being sympathetic. Jonathan gave her a withering stare. Merely because he was currently an undead spirit who was hanging around due to delayed resolution of issues concerning his murder didn’t mean that everybody else was. Most people apparently moved on more promptly, due to not having to wait for Maddy Magellan to turn up on time. He might be wrong generally on the whole afterlife subject, but that didn’t mean he was wrong specifically in every case or the world would be crowded with ghosts, and it wasn’t. 

“Wow, I’m getting to you, aren’t I? I felt an icy shiver go right down my spine.” Carla gave a carefully timed dramatic shudder.

He was a ghost with only vague sensations and that wasn’t sexy even if he’d been alive, not really. How did she somehow make it sexy? Jonathan glared harder.

Carla looked straight at him. She beamed. He’d missed that smile. It had been all too rare when he was around by the end.

“ _How?_ ” he said, but she didn’t reply. She could sense him, but she really couldn’t hear him or see him.

“I’ve never felt the atmosphere do that before,” she murmured, and picked up her book again. This time she turned back three pages.

Were ghosts supposed to be haunted by the living like this? Jonathan frowned over it and then decided it didn’t matter. It was kind of comforting in a weird way.

* * *

“Ah,” said Adam, “how all this reminds me of him.” He took one last lingering look around the half-empty windmill.

Maddy followed the direction of his gaze. Jonathan glared at her, to no effect. 

“Decapitated dummies will do that,” Maddy agreed. “With me it’s headless Barbies. Makes me tear up right away.”

Adam nodded, putting a hand to his head. It was a pretty good final performance. Jonathan could appreciate it, up to a point.

“Aw, look, his favourite brand of biscuits.”

“What?” said Jonathan. “They’re not –”

Maddy snatched at the packet and stuffed it in her pocket. “Those’re _my_ bourbons, thanks. You done?”

To Jonathan’s relief, she ushered him down the stairs and back out. Jonathan resisted the urge to glide down after her. It seemed to have become second nature to follow her about, which he supposed wasn’t all that much of a change from when he’d been alive and she’d been here and not in America.

“Why?” he said, when she reappeared.

“He seemed to feel the need,” said Maddy. “And God knows Adam Klaus deserves pretty much everything that happens to him, but you didn’t have to see that lost look in his eyes –”

“Yeah. When he realised he didn’t have any more tricks planned, and he’d have to pay somebody a decent wage to get any new ones? Pure horror, I should think.”

“You know what he’s like and, given that, you’re probably the one person he’s closest to. You’re lucky you’re haunting me and not him.”

“Perish the thought.” Not that Jonathan liked seeing Adam genuinely upset for once, especially when it was kind of his fault for getting killed, but Adam, discovering Jonathan was hovering about, haunting him? He’d be petrified. If he wasn’t petrified, he’d try to turn it into a routine. Adam Klaus and his performing ghost. Or worse, Adam Klaus and his eternally unpaid undead magician’s assistant. Jonathan could feel himself almost fading out of existence at the idea.

Maddy peered at him. “You’re going even paler and wibbly than usual. You’re not about to evaporate, are you?”

“Whatever you do, don’t tell him!”

* * *

“Look,” Joey Ross said, “since you’re here floating about, take a gander at this and let me know what your giant brain makes of it.”

“You can hear me?” He hadn’t been quite sure whether she could or not until now, but it was a relief. Apart from the variety of having another person to talk to sometimes, it lessened the odds that Maddy would decide at some point that she had gone mad and Jonathan was only a delusional representation of her issues and go off and have therapy and forget him. He didn’t know where that would leave him – some sort of sad, faint figure sitting in a creaking old windmill, desperately in need of someone to haunt? He didn’t want to find out. 

Joey grimaced, albeit in the wrong direction. “Yeah. ‘Course. I’m a _paranormal investigator_. You’re sort of distant, a bit like you’re coming from underwater, but if I keep my ears open, I can get most of it.”

“Well, obviously the door on the left is a red herring, but I expect you worked that one out.”

“Yeah. Obviously. S’that bolt on the right-hand door that got me onto what I think is the real solution, but I’m still baffled by what the butter knife has to do with anything. That one’s really bugging me.”

“Oh,” said Jonathan. “The butter knife. You want me to explain the random butter knife on the floor?”

“Go on, then. Astound me, maestro. Can’t get much fun on your end otherwise, I suppose.”

Ghosts couldn’t clear their throats in embarrassment, but Jonathan had a good go at it anyhow. “Might have been practising poltergeist activity,” he muttered.

“You’ve gone really faint now. Hang on – I’ve been working on something that might amplify the vibrations in the air and help you to communicate more clearly. I asked a mate of mine who’s really into that kind of stuff.” Joey leant over to one side and fiddled with something that Jonathan had assumed was just some over-elaborate hi-fi system.

A terrible screeching filled the room. Jonathan’s whole ethereal being was wracked with it until he thought he was going to enact one of those tacky horror films about spirits vomiting ectoplasm. If he had any ectoplasm to speak of. He couldn’t really say. All of this ghost business seemed to be distressingly blurry and unscientific.

“God, stop it, d’you want to exorcise me?”

Joey flicked the switch off. “Whoops, sorry. Needs a bit of work, but we’ll get there. Promise.”

Jonathan had, he realised, either the worst friends in the world or the best and nothing in between. As an epitaph, he couldn’t decide whether or not he should be worried about it.

* * *

“I’ve been meaning to ask. What’s this?” He managed to make the paper flutter in an otherwise non-existent breeze and felt quite pleased with himself. It had diagrams drawn on it that looked like the sort of thing he’d have drafted up for Adam’s stage shows, only those usually involved dummies, trick boxes, rabbits and glamorous contortionists.

Maddy turned pink, an interesting look for her. “Like you say, we’re stuck together. And we can’t pretend that we don’t feel the way we do about each other because the universe just went about spelling it out in capital letters.”

“So?”

“I’m trying to do seriously creative problem solving on a vital issue,” said Maddy. “Ghost sex. I mean, it’s a law. If a thing exists, some human somewhere will have had sex with it.”

“That’s a terrible idea.”

“Can’t be worse than the last time and we were both alive then.”

She had a point. As usual.

“So, how about you apply your large spectral brain to the matter? Should be a simple thing for a genius like you to overcome.”

Jonathan gave her his very driest Look.

“Yeah, sorry. Not your particular area of expertise,” said Maddy. “Luckily I’ve always had an excellent imagination.”

“Usually in overdrive.”

Maddy preened herself. “Exactly. Anyway, all I’m saying is I don’t see why a shimmering intangible piece of air and an actual living person couldn’t make it together if they really put their minds to it.”

“It _is_ you,” Jonathan said. It was probably only his imagination, but he could have sworn he felt a bit stronger. “I suppose anything’s possible.”

“Says the ghost of the weirdest man I ever met.”

He wavered in the air and turned his head. She smiled. Then she said, “Still, I think that one’s going to take a while, so in the meantime, d’you want to help out solving a case involving an improbable suicide in the locked tower of a ruined castle? Oh, and there’s a whole business about a sausage dog that barked three miles away. Just your kind of thing.”

How could he resist?


End file.
